It’s been a great month here at BrianLeahyArt. I had the amazing chance to travel to Art Basel in Miami this year. It was…wow. An international art event, for starters. Incredible variety of incredible work everywhere. Famous people all over. 80 degree sunny weather in December didn’t hurt either. I had never been to Miami before, much less to a city packed with so much culture and art for one of the biggest events in the international art world. It’s hard to describe it all, but there were more shows, galleries, special events, and notable artists in one place than you could possibly see in the time it ran. My favorite part of the trip was Wynwood Walls, a self-contained concrete garden of huge walls painted by some of the best known street artists (Swoon, How & Nosm, Shepard Fairey, Cryptik…the list goes on). The art was not limited to the Wynwood complex itself- it seemed like every possible wall in the next 5 block radius was painted, and it was pretty much all amazing quality work. Plus more art was still going up as we stood there. We watched artists all over the place, painting through the afternoon into the evening. Let’s just say it was an incredibly inspiring moment.

One of the biggest things that occurred to me was that these artists were beyond prolific. They worked hard and they worked fast, often on a huge scale, and they traveled the planet doing this, as often as they could. I realized, I WANT TO DO THAT. Having *finally* completed “Don’t Be Afraid Of Starting Over”, a 4 x 6′ painting on wood that took me approximately 6 months, this trip happened at the perfect time. I got to thinking…really the only reason this painting took so long is because I actually didn’t work on it all that frequently. I would sporadically take 2-3 hour stabs at it, but I seemed to be held back by the fear of messing something up, or by the uncertainty of which part to paint next. If I learned anything from the trip to Miami, it was that I should be more concerned with just DOING, rather than waiting for the perfect moment of inspiration or whatever. It’s time to crank up my output, and just gain experience by doing.

With that thought in mind I’ve started a sketchbook routine. Here’s some sketches from December.

Constellation // Guardian 1

Constellation // Guardian 2

Animal Expressions 1

Animal Expressions 2

Lol Tree T Shirt

Strange caterpillar // skeleton creature, afraid of what he might become

Update from BrianLeahyArt HQ: Working on a new painting. Here’s a couple sketches:

Color scheme not final. You can see the wall of windows well here.

TO THE SUMMITTTTTT

The painting is going to be as big as the last one (“Pile Of Ship”) aka 4 x 6′ on wood. The basic idea is a mountain peak with footprints to the summit visible. In the background a sun looms larger than life. But the whole scene is viewed through a wall of randomly stacked windows.

I am experimenting with using tape to block off segments of the painting, leaving clean wood visible. Just finished a trial smaller example of the tape part, seen below.

No worries, it only took 4 hours! Ha! Ha. Ugh.

This one’ll be done in time for my summer residency at the unparalleled most excellent TWIG SALON on Pearl St. here in lovely BOULDER COLORADO. Stay tuned friends!

Started another painting on wood, about 5′ tall and 3.5′ wide. As of now it is called “In The Beginning We Lived Outside”. Check out that grain pattern. Danggg son. $12/sheet plywood at Home Depot…It may not be suitable for building anything, but it looks cool when you paint on it.

The title was inspired by a lyric from musical mastermind Valeska Gavotte‘s forthcoming release, Songs for Sinfonietta, which I am very excited to be designing the album art for. It’s shaping up to be pretty spooky and dark so far. Borderline metal. Br00tal.